Abstract: The lexicalist hypothesis, usually attributed to Chomsky (1970), is a foundational hypothesis in numerous current approaches to morphology and syntax, including head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG), lexical-functional grammar (LFG), simpler syntax (Culicover & Jackendoff 2005), various versions of the principles and parameters and minimalist models, and others.1 The basic tenet of the lexicalist hypothesis is that the system of grammar that assembles words is separate from the system of grammar that assembles phrases out of words. The combinatorial system that produces words is supposed to use different principles from the system that produces phrases. Additionally, the word system is encapsulated from the ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The debate over the relationship between synchronic grammars and change, termed the structure-history antinomy by Weinreich and colleagues (1968), has been a central issue in the study of sound systems and their change from the time of the Neogrammarians till today (Blevins 2007, de Lacy & Kingston 2013). Weinreich and colleagues attributed the antinomy to two related ideas deeply rooted in structuralist phonology (Lehmann 1968). First is the view that a theory of synchronic phonology is possible only if variation and heterogeneity within a community are ignored or relegated to simultaneous static idiolects. The second issue was the identification of diachronic explanation with phonetic explanation, which was seen ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The use of signing space has been described as where we see ‘the most profound modality effects on grammatical organization in sign language’ (Meier 2012:587). Signers regularly make use of the space around their bodies in meaningful ways that appear to share some properties with the uses of space seen in co-speech gesture (e.g. Perniss & Özyürek 2015). The use of space in sign languages and the most appropriate theoretical account of this phenomenon have, however, been subject to considerable controversy in the sign language linguistics literature (e.g. Lillo-Martin & Meier 2011 and commentaries in the same issue). Here, we focus our attention on how signers indicate arguments within a clause by modifying the ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In a tone language, where pitch is employed to create linguistic contrasts, what happens when a speaker wants to sing' Are musical melodies constrained by lexical tone, or words chosen carefully to fit the contours of the musical line' Or are the tonal demands of the language set aside in favor of creative musical expression'This question of ‘tone-tune association’ has been a long-standing one in the literature, often with a central concern of intelligibility or loss of linguistic contrasts in musical settings. As Schneider (1961:204) puts it, ‘if a word is to be grammatically intelligible, the individual syllables cannot be sung arbitrarily high or low. Speechtone and musical tone must be definitely correlated’. ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: A major achievement of modern linguistic theory is the development of the binding principles, which govern the distribution and reference of nominals. These principles (so-called conditions A, B, and C) are purportedly universal and are thought to be present from birth (e.g. Crain & McKee 1985, Grimshaw & Rosen 1990, Crain 1991, Crain & Thornton 1998, Thornton & Wexler 1999, Sutton et al. 2010, Conroy et al. 2011, Sutton et al. 2011, among others). A classic counterexample to the universality of the binding principles is Thai—described for decades as a language that violates condition C of the binding theory (although see below for a more precise description). Such exceptions to the binding principles are a vexing ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Pronouns in natural language can have a referential interpretation, as in 1a, or an interpretation that covaries as a function of an antecedent quantifier, as in 1b.1(1)a. The dog ate his bone. (referential pronoun)b. No/Each dog ate his bone. (covarying pronoun)In one tradition, it is claimed that there is a structural constraint on covarying pronouns. Attributed to Reinhart (1976), the claim is that covarying pronouns must be c-commanded by their quantificational binders.2 Contrasts like 2 are often cited in support of this: only the c-commanded pronoun in 2a gets a covarying reading.(2)a. [No dog was fed [before Sal fed it]]. (✓ covarying)b. [[Bob fed no dog] but [Sal fed it]]. (✗ ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The publication of this book is a major event in Slavic linguistics. A glance at the table of contents engenders high expectations: the contributors are a who’s who of Slovenian generative linguistics, and the topics encompass the hot issues in Slavic syntax. And reading the articles does not disappoint. It is gratifying to see so much excellent work on one ‘minor’ Slavic language: a sign of the current vitality of generative Slavic linguistics as a whole. Inevitably, some chapters are more elegantly written than others, but overall the book is a pleasure to read. The editors are to be congratulated for making this fine collection of papers available.One quibble is that the volume’s Slovenian syntax title is not ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Silvina Montrul, a prominent scholar and voice in the field of heritage language acquisition, has published a new book that successfully positions the study of heritage languages in the mainstream as well as in the crossroads between subdisciplines in language science and applied studies. M accomplishes this task by providing the reader with a synthesis and analysis of cross-disciplinary research that has paved the way to a deeper understanding of the theoretical and empirical issues pertinent to the bilingual experience of heritage speakers. Her central claim in this book is that heritage languages are indeed native languages, but in a bilingual environment, which leads to divergent developmental patterns and ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ch. 1 of Iván Ortega-Santos’s book begins with a justification of syntactic inquiry into information structure in general and focalization processes in Spanish in particular. The fact that focalization phenomena incorporate multiple linguistic domains vis-à-vis alterations to word order, prosody, semantics, and pragmatics makes it a compelling challenge for any theoretical account of human language. O-S establishes the goals of the book: to motivate an analysis of subjects that appear at the rightmost edge of the sentence in Spanish. He suggests that right-edge subjects come to appear in this position as the result of three independent processes: (i) movement of a focused phrase to the leftmost clause edge (i.e. ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The loss of genitive case marking in quantifying expressions throughout the history of German is widely known. While the quantified constituent bears genitive case in older stages of German in cases like 1a, Modern German (MG) requires the quantifier and its dependent to agree with respect to gender, number, and case (1b).(1)a. was doch die vrsach sei / das diese vnd dergleichen historien von meniglich wenig beifals vnd glaubens gegeben werde. (16th c.)1 ‘what the reason might be for many people to give these stories little approval and belief’b. Sie erhielten wenig Beifall/*Beifalls. ‘They got little approval.’Despite the prominence of this change, the book under review provides the first comprehensive ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This list acknowledges recent works (except offprints of single articles) that appear to bear on the scientific study of language. The receipt of individual books cannot be separately acknowledged and no book can be returned to the publisher. Note especially that by accepting a book the Editor implies no promise that it will be reviewed in this ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Consider an underlying form ending in a heavy-light sequence, like /maːli/. Footing and stressing /maːli/ will be problematic in a language that requires a trochaic (stressed-unstressed) foot at the ends of words, as in pa(táka). The tableau in 1 lists the compromises available, using the constraints defined in 2. Footing the entire word, as (máːli), produces a foot with three moras. A homophonous alternative leaves the /li/ out of the foot, (máː)li, but now the foot is not aligned to the end of the word. The option of breaking (Poser 1985, Mester 1992), ma(áli), yields a right-aligned, bimoraic foot, but is guilty of splitting underlying /aː/ over two syllables. There is also the option of trochaic shortening ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Kristian Berg and Mark Aronoff (2017; henceforth B&A) use historical data on the spellings of various English suffixes to argue for the role of ‘self-organization’ as a process by which system emerges spontaneously in an unregulated linguistic domain. They argue that choices of spelling for given phonological suffixes gradually settled down in such a way that spellings became indicators of part of speech. This is an attractive idea, but B&A’s data fail to support it, because they do not adequately consider the availability of other explanations. Data cannot constitute evidence for a novel theory, if they are already convincingly accounted for independently of that theory. This, I believe, applies to most if not all ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Geoffrey Sampson (2018) makes two claims in his response to our article about self-organization in spelling (Berg & Aronoff 2017): our explanation is redundant, and the phenomena we address can be better captured in more traditional terms. In our article, we showed first that the relation between graphemic form and morphological function is isomorphic for some suffixes, for example, the adjectival suffix -ous: in today’s English, all and only adjectives with this morpheme are spelled with final , even though phonographically, more words could be spelled that way in American varieties (cf. nervous/service). We also demonstrated that this system evolved gradually in an unsupervised process of self-organization. ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Bruening (2018) discusses many of the claims usually made to support the lexicalist hypothesis, that is, mainly the part that concerns lexical integrity. lexical integrity assumes that words are separate units that are inserted into syntactic structures (Bresnan & Mchombo 1995, Booij 2009). He argues that words are not anaphoric islands, that phrases can appear in words, and that parts of words can be affected by coordination, by focus, by ellipsis, and so on. So, it may be that some of the restrictions that were imposed by lexicalist theories have to be given up and that more flexibility is needed.In his article, Bruening discusses earlier arguments of mine for lexical approaches to resultative constructions and a ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Stefan Müller (2018) criticizes my article, ‘The lexicalist hypothesis: Both wrong and superfluous’ (Bruening 2018), on several grounds. I go through each of his criticisms here and show that none weaken the arguments I made. The point of the original paper is undiminished, and the lexicalist hypothesis should be rejected as empirically false and explanatorily inadequate.Müller (§2) criticizes a phrasal analysis of a nominalization like God’s declaration of them to be wrong on the grounds of directionality. Because many phrase structure analyses build syntactic structures from the bottom up, he says, we would be required to have the VP declare them to be wrong before we get the nominalization declaration of them to ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: [Download TXT] Tone-tune association in Tommo So (Dogon) folk songs. Online supplementary materials: Data corpusThis is a tab-delimited text file of the bigram data corpus used as the input for statisticalanalyses.____________________________________________[Download WAV file] Tone-tune association in Tommo So (Dogon) folk songs. Onlinesupplementary materials: Song recordingsThis is a recording containing all songs transcribed and analyzed in the article. All music andlyrics remain the intellectual property of Tepama Ouologuem, Roukiatou Djeboukile, andKounjay Ouologuem.Stream MP3 version here:____________________________________________[Download WAV file] Tone-tune association in ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Slavic languages; British Sign Language; Folk songs; Dogon language; Dogon (African people); Thai language; Children; Linguistic minorities; Spanish language; Language and languages; Austronesian languages; English l PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
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